42 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



seven or eight minutes and resume his flying up 

 and down with the others. It struck me that if I 

 could have followed or kept them in sight to the 

 finish I should probably have witnessed a little 

 tragedy : the terror of the one and the fury of the 

 other suggested such an end. The keen teeth once 

 fixed in his victim's neck, the noctule would wash 

 his supper of moths and beetles down with a 

 draught of warm blood, then drop the dead body 

 to the earth before returning to his companions. 

 This is conjecture ; but we know that bats have 

 carnivorous propensities, and that in some exotic 

 kinds the big will kill the little, even their own 

 young. Probably they all have something of the 

 vampire in them. The female bat is a most devoted 

 parent, carrying her young about when flying, 

 wrapping them round with her silken wings as with 

 a shawl when in repose, suckling them at her breast 

 even as the highest of the mammalians do. One 

 would not be surprised to learn that the deadliest 

 enemy of her little ones, the one she fears most, is 

 her own consort. 



Whether bats migrate or not has long been a 

 moot question, and Millais, our latest authority, 

 and certainly one of the best, has answered it in 

 the affirmative. But the migration he describes 

 is nothing but a change of locality a retirement 

 from their summer haunts to some spot suitable 

 for hibernation, in some instances but a few miles 

 distant. Other hibernating creatures serpents, for 

 example have the same habit, and though com- 



